We tried to get out of the strike stung city last Friday night. We had tickets. We got to Saint-Lazare. The train didn’t go.

What upset me more than not making Normandie that night was that I had forgotten my camera. In the wooden ticket hall, slabs of marble from a midcentury renovation had been stripped away at intervals. The original walls, temporarily exposed, were tangled with wires, shaggy with dirt, and hung with old posters: faded, crumbling images of fin-de-siecle France. We all know the romance of old ads, but it is moving to see them, spectrally resurrected, in the halls of transport they originally graced.

The train went the next morning. Before boarding, I had the chance to take some pictures. Have a look.